


Mine Shafts and Morgue Drawers

by SinisterScribe



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Claustrophobia, F/M, I love mothership stuff, Regina has issues, Regina in survival mode, Shame, Sheriff Gruff reappears, alternate mine scene, and also not an ass in season 1, if Emma was genderbent, momma Regina and baba Henry feels, more of this romcom guff, not really connected to anything, or ever, season 1 AU, the red leather jacket dies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-09
Updated: 2017-12-09
Packaged: 2019-02-12 09:39:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12956490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SinisterScribe/pseuds/SinisterScribe
Summary: An addition to 'Alternatively...'I came across this in my harddrive and I really like the writing of it. There's no real point to it. I think it was written in response to the realisation that if Emma were a guy then there would be no way that he could go down into the mine after Henry and that left only one person small enough...never mind that if Hopper could get OUT then Graham could have gotten IN.But I digress.Swan Queen if y'all really squint.





	Mine Shafts and Morgue Drawers

**Author's Note:**

> So this is set in my...romcom AU? I dunno. 
> 
> Just a short scene in that dumb episode where Henry ends up down the damn mine and Once doesn't have a Lassie to get little boys out of wells so they have to make do with deputies instead. 
> 
> This version of Emmet had this whole mob boss informant backstory going on in romcom verse. I can't write simply enough for romcoms it seem. They do not have enough murder plots, monsters or explosions. I feel this is why it doesn't sell itself as a genre to me.

**_The Mine…_ **

 

“One of us has to go down there.” Emmet was crouched on the lip of the ventilation shaft, staring down into it. He could hear Henry calling up to him.

“I’ll go.”

Emmet wasn’t at all surprised when she volunteered but his expression was tight when he turned to look at her.

“You shouldn’t.”

“I’m the only one that will fit.” Regina gritted at him. “No one else here is small enough.” She looked between Emmet and Gruff. “You know it.”

Emmet’s jaw clenched and he wanted to refuse her but –annoyingly- she was right. There was no way that he or Osric could fit down that skinny little vent. He pressed his lips together so hard that they were lined with white and looked up to Gruff, wondering if he could talk her out of it.

“I’ll get the winch.” Gruff obviously knew better.

Emmet huffed out a low growl and uncoiled to his feet.

“You ever done something like this before?” He stood over Regina and she looked up at him. Her jaw tight.

“No.” She admitted after a long moment. “I’ve never really had call to go poking around derelict mineshafts.”

Emmet rolled his eyes and took her by the shoulders, turning her around so quickly she made a sound of surprise. He gripped her coat and tugged it down off her arms so she was left in her slacks and turtleneck sweater. He dumped her coat on the ground and spun her back to him. Her eyes blazed, opening her mouth to give him a blistering telling off no doubt, but he wasn’t in the mood.

“It’s going to be cramped, it’s going to be hot and –if you aren’t now- you’re sure as hell going to be claustrophobic.” He spoke with clipped words to try and cover how terrified he was at the thought of her going down there. He couldn’t even say why it frightened him so much anyway.

Though it was arguable that he just didn’t want to admit why it terrified him.          

“ _You’ve_ done something like this before?” She had that unreadable look on her face again.

“I’ve been in a couple of tight scrapes, yeah.” Emmet’s jaw clenched. He hadn’t enjoyed it at the time either and he did not wish a similar experience on her. “Running from a mob boss, the only place to hide was in a morgue drawer.”

Regina opened her mouth and then seemed to change her mind as to what she was going to say.

“I’ll tell you later.” Emmet didn’t want to talk about it, he regretted telling her even that small part of the story. Maybe she’d forget.

Yeah. Sure.

She’d forget.

“Here, put this on.” Gruff appeared with a harness and a couple of firemen to set up the winch.

They all gave their protests to the Mayor clambering down there herself and they promptly fell into stumbling silence when Regina just _looked_ at them.

Emmet helped her into the harness and it was a matter of moments before she hung suspended over the vent, glancing down as if to measure the darkness below her but she didn’t seem perturbed at the small space or the task she was undertaking in the slightest. She listened intently as the fireman explained how the harness worked and how she could lower herself at her own pace and how to summon them to pull her back up.

She was worried for Henry, impatient to get to him, but that was all.

Emmet, on the other hand, thought he might implode.

Regina glanced down again and looked down at herself, arranging the ropes just so and leaned as if to drop down.

“Wait.” Emmet’s hand closed on her arm and she turned her head, looking down at it and then slowly back up to him.

He didn’t let go.

He opened his mouth to say…he didn’t know. Too much. Not enough. He didn’t know.

“Just…both come back. Both of you.”

She frowned at him, seeming to not understand or believe that he would care about her one way or the other _Henry_ was his family. She was just the woman that had raised Emmet’s son.

Emmet let loose a slow breath and made a note to prove that notion wrong to her as soon as he could.

“Be careful.”

“We’ll be fine.” She spoke with stilted words, obviously not accustomed to _comforting_ someone. “I’ll…be back soon.”

Then she was gone.

Emmet’s hands clenched to fists at his sides and he swallowed hard. He leaned over, watching her descend into the dark. She seemed to feel his regard because she glanced up at him, her face seeming so pale in the dark of the tunnel. She watched him for a moment –just a moment- then managed something like a smile that he supposed was meant to reassure him.

It didn’t.

He felt something clench hot and tight in his chest when she sank into the dark and it swallowed her whole.

He wished he’d gone instead. He wished he could have. He seethed out a shivering breath and closed his eyes.

He wished he’d gone because…because the waiting was the worst part and he’d rather that it was her –up here, safe- doing the waiting rather than him.

She’d better come back with their son.

If she didn’t, he was digging down there with his bare hands.

Down in the vent, things were going a little better for Regina.

Marginally.

Emmet had been right, the space closed in around her faster than she had thought it would. She had a light, but it pointed her way down the shaft, not level with her head so that she might examine the walls around her. All she had was the sense of everything being far too close around her and she _really_ could have lived without Emmet mentioning morgue drawers before she’d come down here.   

Still, she’d faced down more terrifying things than an empty mine shaft and it was the only thing that stood between herself and her son.

“Hey, I see something!”

Relief clenched hard in her chest when she heard Henry’s voice.

“Someone’s coming!” He sounded excited. She smiled and then it died a little with his next words. “I _told you_ Emmet would rescue us!”

Yes, well, she was no Saviour but…at least she could fit down a mineshaft vent.

The top part of the mineshaft vent anyway. It widened out a little as she descended closer and closer to Henry. She could still reach out and touch both sides easily if she could release her death grip on the rope long enough, but it was broader than it had been.

Which helped her claustrophobia not at all.

She saw Henry’s face before he saw hers. The lamp spilled its light down onto his upturned face and her eyes scoured over him, checking for injuries.

Nothing.

Grubby, wide eyed and jittery, but fine.

Her little boy was okay.

“Mom?!” Henry jerked back when he recognised the silhouette as wrong for his dad’s ranging frame.

For a moment, Henry was completely flummoxed. His…his _mom_ had come for him?

Why?

Why would she do that?

She didn’t love him. She pretended to. She was the Evil Queen, she didn’t know how to love. She didn’t…she didn’t…did she?

Henry clamped down on that treacherous thought. It wasn’t true. It wasn’t real. She lied about the curse and she lied about loving him. She lied about _everything_.

“What are you doing here?” He demanded and something flickered over her face but he couldn’t see it properly in the light.

“You cut school, I’m here to give you your homework.”

“Huh?!” Henry shook his head sharply. “What?”

“Madam Mayor!” Hopper leaned over so that he could see further up the air vent and catch sight of Regina. “What…? Why isn’t the Sheriff doing this?”

“In case you hadn’t noticed, the Sheriff and his deputy are significantly larger than I. I was the only one small enough to come down.” She turned her attention to Henry and sucked in a deep breath of the stale air. It didn’t help. “He was going to come, Henry. He couldn’t.”

“Oh.” Henry looked up at her still and she didn’t have a name for the expression on his face.

“Now, come on, let’s go.” Regina twisted so that she could brace one foot against the side of the shaft and steady herself that way. She twisted, slipping sideways so she was parallel to the ground and stretched her hand out to Henry. “Take my hand and we can get out of here.”

“Why?”

Regina looked up when she felt a shiver roll through the earth around her. The claustrophobia closed in and she swallowed audibly. She beat it back. Henry needed her.

“Because I don’t want you stuck in a mine, sweetheart. Now, give me your hand.”

“Why isn’t Emmet here? The _real_ reason.”

Regina frowned down at him and twisted when a low groan of metal on metal gusted above her somewhere.

She could feel sweat beginning to inch down her back. It was too hot. The air was too thick. The walls seemed to bend in and shiver, like they were breathing, a huge metal throat working to swallow her down.

She let loose a slow breath.

_That’s nonsense. Nothing is going to eat you down here but fear._

Her hand tightened on the rope until her knuckles whitened. Until the cord creaked. Until the skin of her palm began to burn.

Her eyes snapped open and she turned back to Henry.

“Look at me, Henry. Think about Emmet. He’s huge, easily twice as broad as I am and significantly taller. He wouldn’t _fit_. That is fact. I cannot lie about that. Now give me. Your _hand_.”

Henry’s jaw took on a mulish tilt and he frowned, thinking that over.

Something shivered over her head and Regina gulped hard. The walls, the breathing walls closing in around her. The metal gullet hungrily gaping to swallow her. That rumble again, the snarl of an empty stomach. She looked up the throat of the air vent to the looming white box as small as the palm of her hand high above. It seemed to waver, popping in and out of focus.

She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t…she couldn’t…she jerked upright and her arms bunched, preparing to climb hand over hand to get out.

“Mom?”

His voice stopped her cold.

“Yes?” Her voice was hoarse from holding back screams. She closed her eyes and rested her head against the rope, the rough cord –ironically- grounding her a little.

 _You’re not here. You’re somewhere else. Somewhere nice. Somewhere…_ open _. Don’t be afraid. Keep breathing. Keep. Breathing._

“Are…are you okay?” Henry’s voice wavered a little. “You look scared.”

Regina shivered and beat the fear back. She burned it in her head. Set fire to _everything_. The walls, the swallowing walls, the rattling breath of the hungry mine, the snarling of the empty tunnels below. The bowels of the earth just waiting gulp her down and slowly digest her…

Regina gagged and clapped her hand over her mouth.

Don’t be sick. Don’t you _dare_ be sick.

Too hot. Too hot. It was too hot in the throat of the mine.

She scrambled madly at her turtleneck sweater. She yanked viciously at it by the neck and wrestled herself out of it so she was just in her red tank top beneath it. She scrubbed it over her face, smearing her makeup but wiping away most of the cold sweat that slicked her skin.

It was sweat. Sweat. Not saliva. She was _not_ being eaten.

Her stomach heaved again and she folded in half with it.

Do not be sick.

Do NOT be sick. 

“Mom!” Henry’s voice finally got through to her.

“I’m scared.” The words fell from her. “I’m terrified.” She squeezed the rope in her hands, twisting it between her palms until it burned.

The pain helped. She knew the pain was real. If she hurt, then she was still alive.

“Give me your hand, Henry. I want to get out of here.” She flipped sideways again, bracing both feet against the side of the shaft, trying not to notice that it was so narrow that her shoulders scraped against the opposite side.

Henry hesitated, his eyes roving over her like he was seeing her for the first time.

“This is real.” He whispered. “You’re really scared.”

“Yes.” She panted and suddenly felt cold. She was cold all over. When had that happened? She tried to stop her teeth chattering but it was a losing battle. “Yes. I’m really scared.”

Something groaned above her.

Hungry. The earth was hungry. It could _taste_ her.

“Regina.”

“What?”

Hopper was relieved when her voice was a low snarl. She had entirely forgotten about him in her borderline panic attack.

Archie had to admit that he had never seen someone _function_ through a panic attack. She was borderline hysterical but all she did was rest her head against the side of the air vent and shiver. It was convulsive shivering, but that was all.

She wasn’t screaming, she hadn’t given in to the stark panic response to throw up, she had to be on the verge of just passing out from the stress of it all. She’d been about to bolt a few moments ago but she had stopped at a single word from her son.

If Hopper had ever doubted that Regina loved her little boy more than anything in the world –which he hadn’t- then this would have proved it emphatically.

“You’re alright. We’re right here.”

“That, Doctor Hopper, is quite the problem.” She gusted something like a sob that he thought was supposed to be a laugh.

“Henry, we need to get out of here.”

“I…it’s supposed to be Emmet that saves people…”

Archie was struck with the blinding urge to smack Henry on the back of the head and bellow at him ‘ _is this any way to treat the woman who raised you?!’_ but he muscled it down and tried again.

“Look at your mother, Henry. _See_ her. She’s scared. Are you going to let that continue? You’re supposed to be a knight, aren’t you? A hero. Don’t heroes rescue damsels in distress?”

“I’m hardly a damsel.” Regina had her head pressed against the cold of the metal wall still, her eyes screwed shut. She tried to imagine that it was the fridge in her kitchen. That she was simply cooling her head whilst waiting for the coffee machine to brew.

She shied from the thought of coffee when the smell filled her head and her stomach lurched.

Don’t be sick.

 _Don’t be sick_.

“You’re a young unmarried woman, a damsel. Get over it.” Archie told her firmly and turned back to Henry. “Look at your mom, Henry. Doesn’t she look like she needs rescuing?”

Regina balked at being any kind of victim but she thought that if she opened her mouth she might lose her lunch all over the good doctor and then she really _would_ have embarrassed herself.

As it was, she was considering leaving the cricket here just so he never breathed a word of this to anyone.

“How can I rescue anyone? I can’t do that.” Henry bit his lip and Regina’s eyes snapped open. She found that he had moved so that he was directly below her, looking into her eyes.

“Henry Daniel Mills, I raised you to know that you can be whatever you want to be. If you put your mind to it, you can do almost anything. Except for maybe fly. You’re never getting a cape again.”

Henry flushed at the memory of nearly managing to make it off the roof when he had been younger. He’d been convinced that the Superman outfit his mom had got him made him Kryptonian.

That had been the last DC comic she’d ever let him have.

A shiver raced through the ground again and Regina slammed her eyes shut.

It’s not alive. It can’t eat you. It _can’t_.

But if there was a cave-in the ground would certainly swallow all of them.

It was the sound of screaming metal tearing that stopped her from throwing up that time. Something clunked, metal shrieking over metal. Something fell and thumped her hard on the back, bouncing off and caught by Henry out of sheer reflexive luck.

He blinked at it, staring at the…sheared…metal…screw.

Regina’s eyes went wide and she twisted when the metal screamed again, when the ever gaping maw of the mine called for food.

She saw the panel fall, peeling away from the wall, falling straight for them. Not far. A couple of feet, but it had to be heavy. Very fucking heavy. Solid steel. The lining of the throat sloughing away as the beast died.

It was so hungry. Starving.

It wanted one last meal.

Regina reacted on instinct. Terror galvanising her. She spun her body, bracing herself over Henry, putting herself between her son and the falling torn panel.

It was the broad straight edge that slammed into her shoulder blade rather than the ragged side. The edge of the panel was an inch thick and it lashed her back like a lead pipe. The pain was terrific, blunt force was always worse. Crushing blows were terrible. It hurt _so_ much.

Agony. Sweet agony, her old friend.

Regina let loose one seething breath and it was half in relief because her body could only deal with one crisis at a time and the physical, for now, overrode the mental.

She wasn’t afraid anymore.

The panel tilted off her body, falling sideways and shrieking against the metal walls of the shaft. She was knocked a few inches further down the shaft by the metal panel’s weight and it wedged tightly there, halving the width of the shaft between her and freedom. The distant light above disappeared and she was dimly aware of Henry calling on her, Hopper frantically trying to get to her through the scant gap afforded them but she felt suddenly detached from everything.

Defence mechanism, she noted idly, old techniques of putting up pain gates returning to her. She hadn’t had to use them in years. She supposed because there was no need when she wasn’t at war but –luckily for her- she remembered the how of it well enough.

Well, bully for her, she was still stuck in a fucking mineshaft with a son that had no interest in going anywhere with her.

“Mom, look at me.”

Regina’s eyes snapped open when she felt Henry’s hand close over hers. She flipped her hand in an instant, clasping his fingers in hers with a grim determination not to release him until they both felt daylight again.

“You okay?”

“You’re bleeding.” Her own pain faded into insignificance and she frowned in confusion when he shook his head.

“It’s your blood.”

Oh, that was right, it was dripping onto his face.

Her hand went to her neck, it felt hot. Blood painted her fingers. Looked like the ragged edge had caught her anyway.

Not bad, shallow, not life threatening if she got out of there quickly. The real danger would come from passing out and being stuck down there.

She couldn’t die. Not here. Not in the earth. Not _eaten_.

She tried to make her voice sound strong but it just came out strangled and small.

“Can we please go home now?”

Henry, eyes wide and wet, nodded furiously.

“Okay, okay.” Regina gulped hard and jolted when she tried to swing around so that he could climb onto her lap and be pulled up with her. She looked wildly around when the trapped feeling assailed her from all sides. She lifted her arm, the wound on her back shrieked like a banshee and beat the panic back.

It gave her time to see that the ropes that suspended her were trapped between the panel that had fallen and the wall, there was no give at all. They wouldn’t be able to pull them out. She was…she was going to have to climb.

Carrying Henry.

With the muscles in her back crushed against her bone.

An impossible task.

Thank _god_.

She excelled in impossible tasks. She had taken over the world, after all. Cast the Dark Curse, murdered her father and done all kinds of things that no sane person could do. The advantage of being insane she supposed.

“Alright, hold on a second.” Regina tentatively released Henry’s hand and twisted awkwardly. She set a foot down onto the steel beam that traversed the airshaft between Henry and herself. She balanced carefully and fumbled with the clasps of her harness. She needed to get out of it if she wanted to go anywhere. Her hands were shaking. Why were her hands shaking?

“I got it.” Henry wriggled up through the gap and Regina focussed on staying upright whilst Henry undid every buckle he could find and helped his mom get out of the harness and free of the caught ropes.

“Alright,” her voice sounded hoarse, “we’re going to have to climb out. Henry and I will go first. Hopper, you’re going to have to get up here and brace the panel when we climb onto it. I’d rather not punch it down on top of you like a lid.”

“That…would not be good.” Hopper agreed and scrambled up after Henry so he could get out as soon as the boy and Regina moved. “Henry, take this and bind your mom’s wound.”

“What?” Henry twisted and looked at the dusty sweater that Hopper held out to him. “It’s dirty.”

“Stopping the bleeding is more important, sweetheart.” Regina crouched awkwardly, wobbling on her toes on the beam. She braced her arm and held still whilst Hopper guided Henry through the makeshift bandaging.

Henry took the strips of torn sweater that Hopper handed him and made a makeshift dressing over Regina’s nasty wound, he took Archie’s tie and bound it in place. Tightening it three times under Archie’s instructions. It needed to bind the wound shut, he said. It looked painful, the tie cutting into his mom’s neck but she never made a sound.

“Okay, we’re ready.” Regina turned back to Henry and looked him in the eye. “We’re going to climb up onto the panel and Doctor Hopper is going to brace it so it doesn’t fall on him.”

“But what if…?”

“Onto the panel, Henry.”

“But…”

“Trust me. This is the only way.”

Henry opened his mouth again and faltered. Trust her? He hadn’t trusted her in such a long time.

But…but the metal. She’d put herself between it and him. Her blood was soaking into her tank top now it had run so far turning it a nauseating black in the dim light. It had slowed since he had put the sweater bandage but it still seemed to be everywhere.

“One thing at a time.” She ducked her head so he had to look at her again. “Onto the panel.”

Henry finally nodded.

It was awkward, hot and sweaty work to get Henry onto the panel with Regina bracing it until Hopper could get up there and take the weight.

“You can’t carry him.” Hopper told her quietly. “You can’t climb out. You can barely lift your arm.”

“I just have to climb high enough for them to hear us. Then they can throw down a rope and pull us out.”

“Let me carry Henry.”

“There’s no way I can hold up the panel with you and Henry both on top of it. This is the only way. Now, can _you_ make the climb?”

Archie offered something of a scant smile.

“Like my life depends on it.”

Regina coughed something that might have been a laugh in open air.

“Good answer. Brace yourself.”

Hopper nodded, standing on the beam with his legs straight, bent at the waist and his back flat against the panel letting the big bones in his legs take the weight.

Regina clambered messily up onto the panel, carefully making sure that Archie could take the weight. It wasn’t that bad, the panel was wedged pretty tightly in place.

“Alright,” Regina smiled for Henry, “good work. Now, what you have to do is get onto my back, like a horsey ride when you were little, and hold on tight.”

“I’m too big.”

“No you’re not.”

“I’m too big!” Henry looked terrified and she gripped him by the shoulders.

“It’s alright.” She told him firmly. “I’m here. I’m not going to let anything happen to you.” She reached up with grimy fingers and wiped away her own blood spotting his face and the tear tracks that had run through it. “Now, climb onto my back.”

“One…one thing at a time.” Henry nodded and Regina turned and bent her legs, making it easier for him.

He lunged up onto her back and white hot pain lashed her. She braced herself against the wall and nausea assailed her but this time the panic beat it back. The fear. A different kind though. Henry was depending on her. If she didn’t climb, they’d die. _He_ would die.   

She’d heard of women lifting cars to rescue their trapped children, fighting off men three times their size to save their babies from one scratch on their heads, walking for miles carrying their children to safety with wounds that should have killed them. Heard of impossible feats where maternal instinct had defied the odds and given women superhuman strength to protect their children from any harm.

She’d be damned if some _civilian_ was going to be a better mother than her.

Regina gripped the rope with chapped hands, coiled her foot through it so she might use it as a sort of stirrup and sucked in a deep breath.

Then began the climb.

It was grim muscle burning work. Henry felt like he was made of lead on her back. That there was a branding iron scoring into her shoulder blade with every move. Rope burns formed quickly on her palms, on the inside of her leg even through the material of her pants. She could feel bruises forming on her hips from where Henry’s knees clutched her to stay aboard.

She dimly heard Archie clattering onto the panel. The rope swung violently and her knuckles clenched, vertigo assailed her and she bit back a scream when her hands seemed to snap open of their own accord.

Henry saved them.

His hands clapped over hers, knuckles white, and he panted hard in her ear.

“One step at a time.” He whispered, his voice sawing in his throat but she nodded.

“One step.” She lifted her hand and clapped it a foot over her head, loosened her hold on the rope with her feet, bunched her legs beneath her, tightened her hold with her feet and hauled with all of her strength. “At a time.”

It became nothing but rope after that.

She didn’t look up at the daylight, she didn’t look at the metal throat groaning around her. She would not be its dinner today. She shied away from that. Just the rope. Just her and the rope. She kept every part of her _considerable_ attention focussed on that damn rope.

Clap a hand up. Push with her legs. Pull with her arms.

Clap. Push. Pull. 

Clap.

Push.

Pull.

Again.

And again.

And again.

Everything hurt. Everything. Her muscles burned. She felt like she was on fire. She felt like she was dying of thirst. Her skin seemed to be made of rusted iron. Henry was choking her. She wanted nothing more than to shake him off. Be free of the weight. Just for a second. Just for a moment. Just a second. She just needed a breather.

But then his voice in her ear and he reminded her.

One step at a time.

One clap. One push. One pull.

She could do it. He knew she could. She was so strong. It was amazing. She was carrying him and he was nearly as big as she was. Hand over hand. He’d only ever seen that in movies. He’d tried it once and it was impossible.                

He talked and talked and talked.

Her. The rope. Henry’s voice.

Clap. Push. Pull.

Clap, push and _pull_.

The movements ran together in her head. The world seemed to spin dizzyingly around her. So she turned her attention back on the rope. It was safe with the rope. The rope was her way out. The rope meant safety. She trusted the rope.

Another rope was there.

She didn’t trust that one.

Nope.

No.

This was her rope. She liked this rope. She was _keeping_ this rope.

Henry was talking to her again, no, not her. His voice was too loud and his head tilted back. He spoke to her again, gripping her shoulder but she couldn’t pay attention right now. She needed to pay attention to the rope.

The rope would keep them safe. It was solid. It was real. Nothing else felt real, but the rope was.

Clap. Push. Pull.

Henry kept talking at her but the words babbled in and out of her ears as if they were bubbling from under water. She laughed a coughing wet sound when she thought it sounded like the teacher from the _Peanuts_ cartoon. Poor Charlie Brown, missing the football.

Every damn time.

That being said, she preferred _Calving and Hobbes_. Though _Liberty Meadows_ was her favourite guilty pleasure.

That rope again. Waggling at her.

Regina glared at it distrustfully and yelped when Henry lunged for it, she lost her grip and scrambled madly for a hold, sliding down precious inches. 

Henry clung to her impossibly tightly and she coughed for air. He loosened his hold again and the water bubbles that vaguely sounded like his voice seemed apologetic.

Didn’t matter. She still had the rope.

She and the rope were pals.

They were going to be okay.

Clap. Push. Pull.

Regina actually yelped in pain when the daylight stabbed into her eyes.

She’d have fallen, they both would have, had strong hands not reached into the hole and wrapped around her arms.

She would later find out that Emmet had lifted both her and Henry out of the air vent in a single pull.

Lucky bastard. Look at him and his upper body strength.

Henry released his mom immediately and sat down with a thump on his backside, his legs numb from holding on so tightly. His arms shook from clinging cramping hard around her neck and he stared wide eyed at the huge welt that ringed her collar bone.

He’d done that. He’d held on so tight that she was bruising.

It took Emmet long moments to try and convince Regina to let go of her part of the rope and even then it was only because Henry gave her another one of the same colour to hold onto. She clutched it in red raw white knuckled hands. She shook all over, panting hard, sweat and grime slicked her and Emmet was trying to talk to her but she couldn’t really hear anything.

“Mom?” Henry spoke tentatively and crawled towards her over the springy grass. “Mom, you gotta come back now.”

Regina just sat there, staring at nothing. She breathed hard and sweat tricked down the side of her neck but those were the only signs of life from her.

“Mom,” Henry sniffed hard, “mom, please come back.”

She blinked and he crawled even close to kneel between her legs.

“Mom, mom, please come back.” Henry leaned into her and hugged her about the neck, gently this time. He buried his face in her neck and his tears splashed onto her skin and he didn’t care that he was crying like a baby. “Mom, _please._ ”

The rope tumbled from her grip to the ground.

“Mom, please, mom, come back to me. I’m sorry I left. I’m sorry I was mean. I’m so _sorry_.” His voice caught on a sob at the last and she sucked in a deep breath.

“Henry.” Her arms came around him, careful to keep her bloodied hands away from the clothes on his back but hugging him anyway. “I’m here. I’m here, baby boy. I’ll always be here.”

“Oh my god, what IS this?!” Emmet was behind her, his hand coming down on her neck and the tie there, looking at his fingers when he felt the damp.

Red. His entire hand was red.

He wasn’t even aware he was bellowing for a paramedic until one of them hurried over as if dreading the mere prospect of the Sheriff’s deputy coming to personally fetch him. The medic was grabbed by Emmet and practically hurled to the ground behind the mayor.     

And he’d thought _she_ was scary.

He worked quickly, cutting away the ‘bandage’ that Henry had managed to fashion with Archie’s instruction. The medic grimaced when he saw the sweater that had been used was _filthy_. He started to pull it away and changed his mind.

“We need to get her to the hospital. The wound is in need of _serious_ cleaning and the field dressing has stopped the bleeding but it’s also stuck to the wound. If I take it off here, I’ll just open it up again.”

“Move.” Emmet didn’t wait for the medic to heed his warning and the smaller man was forced to scramble out of the way so that Emmet could gently pry Henry away from Regina. “Henry, your mom needs to go to the hospital.”

“Okay.” Henry sat back, scrubbing at his tears and his nose with a sleeve.

“Why?” Regina frowned at them both. “I’m fine.”

Emmet just looked at her for a long moment and blinked a couple of times.

“I don’t think she’s all the way back yet.” Henry said quietly and Emmet nodded, pressing his lips together.

“It’s okay, skirts, they just wanna check on you. You know, reassure folks that you’re okay.”

“I _am_ okay.” She frowned at him, speaking to him like he was a particularly slow child.

“Yeah, _we_ know that but…just…for Henry.”

Regina’s gaze slid to Henry, noting his wide eyes and the tear tracks through the muck on his face.

“Fine.” She snapped and looked at her legs. She inhaled a deep breath and then looked up at Emmet. “Don’t be alarmed, but I don’t think my legs work.”

Emmet opened his mouth to bellow for the paramedic again and then realised she couldn’t possibly sit as she was sitting with her knees bent like that if she was paralysed. She was just recovering from the strain. She didn’t realise it yet, but she was in for a world of freaking pain when the adrenaline wore off.

“I gotchya.” Emmet leaned closer to her and slipped his arm under her knees and carefully around her back. “Put your arms around my neck.”

“ _What._ Do you think you’re doing?”

“It’s this or the wheelchair, skirts.”

“Why do you call me that?” Regina scowled at him but looped her arms around his neck. Better this than being wheeled around like some _invalid_.

If asked later, she’d say it was a request from Sidney for a good front page photo.

A ruse that might be somewhat ruined by the fact that Archie had just plucked Sidney’s camera from his hands, tossed it to the ground and crushed it beneath his boot heel. He said something to Sidney that caused the journalist’s eyebrows to shoot for his hairline and he did a quick about-face and hurried away from Archie.

Huh, cricket’s got claws.

“I’ll tell you later.” Emmet hurried to the ambulance. He could feel her blood soaking into his shirt.

“You always say that and you never follow through.” She grumbled.

“Maybe if you talked to me, you’d find these things out.” Emmet lunged up into the ambulance easily despite carrying her and he gently set her down onto one of the gurneys inside.

 He knew better than to sit beside her and settled for sitting opposite her and holding onto her knees lightly so as to steady her a little. He was more than a bit concerned when she didn’t give even a token protest at his hands on her.

He only wished that it had been under better circumstances. 

Henry scrambled in after his parents, the rope he’d given to his mom to calm her down earlier clenched in his hand. He didn’t know if she’d need it again but it had seemed to calm her when she’d been brought out into the daylight, crying out as if it burned her. He hurried to sit next to her. He wanted to hold her hand, but she rested them delicately palm up on her legs, the torn skin of her palms red raw and seeping blood. So he carefully looped his arm through the crook of her elbow and held tightly.

She looked down at him with a smile and that just worried him more. She didn’t seem to be _feeling_ anything. She’d been so scared down in the mine. SO scared. Now she was…fine.

That terrified him.   

“Ye’ve got them?” Gruff appeared at the back of the ambulance with the paramedic. A different one, the first had hurriedly volunteered to drive when faced with the prospect of sharing the back of the ambulance with Emmet.

“Yeah. I’m going to stay with them at the hospital.”

Gruff glanced at Regina and Henry, looking them over, and nodded once.

“I’ll clean up here.” He tossed Emmet’s red leather jacket onto the gurney beside Regina and moved off to move everyone along and secure the scene.

The paramedic jumped up into the van, closed the doors behind him and hustled past Emmet to reach the medical supplies. He clapped his hand against the back wall of the ambulance so the driver would know they were good to go and the ambulance lurched into motion.

“Alright, Madam Mayor, shouldn’t take us long to get to the hospital and…” The paramedic trailed off when he realised that he didn’t have the attention of his patient.

She was looking at the deputy. More accurately, his shoulder. It was soaked red. She felt something very like concern twist her stomach into a knot. She lifted her head to look Emmet in the eye.

“Emmet, you’re hurt?” Her voice sounded worried even to her own ears and she’d berate herself for it later… _after_ she was sure he’d be okay.

“No. I’m fine. It’s not mine.” He spoke carefully and Regina looked wildly at Henry, reaching for his face when she saw the red there.

“I’m okay!” Henry reassured her. “It’s not mine either.”

Regina mulled that over and then she noticed.

Her back didn’t feel right and she was… _sticky._ Her skin felt stiff on her neck and she looked down, a rust colour covered her from her collarbone to the neckline of her top. Tacky and flaking away in dust from her fingers. The scent of iron and copper filled her head. Blood. Lots of blood.

Her blood.

The mine had bitten her. Taken a chunk out of her. Gotten a taste.

The unbidden image of the ground yawning open beneath her, gulping her down into the black, earth pressing in on her, filling her nose, her mouth, getting into her eyes. Blinding her, choking her, deafening her. Crushing her.

It knew what she tasted like. It would _find_ her.

It wasn’t like she could outrun the earth.

Emmet’s eyes widened and he reached for her when she swayed and turned a truly alarming shade of green.

He saw her lunge away from Henry so as to not get _him_.

She did not, however, manage to miss Emmet’s favourite jacket when she threw up.

A lot.

She threw up a lot.

Emmet grimaced at the loss of his jacket. Well, she had been pretty plain in her disdain of the thing. It wasn't the end of the world anyway. He could replace the jacket.

...though he was fast realising that he couldn't replace Regina.

and THAT was scarier than mine shafts and morgue drawers combined.  

 

**Author's Note:**

> It's pretty short but I really enjoyed writing about one of my fears. I'm a little claustrophobic (a lot sometimes) and it was cathartic to write about. 
> 
> I know I have other things that I need to update but this bit was already written and I just wanted to give the few and the faithful a bit of Scribe writing to get them through the harsh winter months since I am decidedly not writing right now. 
> 
> Hope you enjoyed.


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